


A King's Game

by auxanges



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 05:54:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auxanges/pseuds/auxanges
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one can keep my prize from me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A King's Game

**Author's Note:**

> I tried first person hoo ha

They called me a king, once.

They followed my every step, came running at my beck and call. _Anything you desire_ , they cried in earnest, _only ask and anything you desire will be yours_.

A king? No, I was more than a king. Kings came to me.

It was a clear summer night when I saw you riding alone, the wind laughing at your back and your eyes closed: eyes that all too often narrowed and flashed like cracked gemstones. It was a clear summer night when I pointed at you with a hand longing to be adorned in diamonds and gold. _I want that. Give him to me._

It was fear in their eyes when I had spoken, I later realized. Fear was a foreign word on a venomous tongue. Foreign to you, even as you spurred your horse faster into the encroaching darkness. You were my favourite toy, my most precious prize, my moonlit reflection, always just out of arms' reach.

This would not do for a king.

Did you really hate me? Surely you must have: it is a potent elixir, that burning detestation that clouds your vision and guides your blade. And yet, it was mesmerizing to watch you grow. So tempting to twist fate every which way so our paths would cross again. So very satisfying to see my shadow, my toy soldier in his new uniform, neatly pressed and perfectly polished and simply begging to be soiled. To hold the even stare made of steel, to watch those lips swear iron oaths to destroy me.

If we had souls in those days, mine would have sung to the mountains.

We played a king's game. We filed our pawns along borders and sent our bishops into churches. We burned the bishops and killed the pawns. I burned you and you killed me. And yet you still lost. I almost felt sorry for you. Almost.

We danced a king's dance. We forged our own steps in the ground beneath our boots, weaving a fugue in blood and rain. We met, and withdrew, and met again. The skies above us carried the raucous laughter of my toy soldier over our heads and to the heavens I fought to defy.

No-one could keep my prize from me.

One day, you overthrew the king.

You really hated me then. I hated you, too--I hated the moon and its mocking face painting the walls of an empty hall. I hated the stony silence that followed the fading echo of a single set of footfalls where there had once been two. I hated everything about you; everything but the desire I still chased after. Tirelessly. Thoughtlessly. Desperately.

Or perhaps I hated that the most.

_Give him to me._

One day, you and the king were made equals.

It was amusing, to think of the way it finally happened: the way we were thrown under one banner and left to collect dust like the antiquities that we were. My toy soldier returned to me, like a good boy, no fuss. Tell me, good knight, was it another loss, or simply a timely concession? You knew the game very well, after all.

I played the king's music for you. You were my ice-cold canvas, the instrument I longed for with every press of a finger along pale, pale skin, drinking in every sigh and whisper that complimented  my artistry. It suited you well, and the purple and blue that ran along your neck and snaked beneath your shirt suited you, too.

Did you still hate me? Or did the very word, like it had for me, have its meaning eroded away by waves of crimson dusks, kissed onto bullets and bitten into flesh and buried deep, so deep no-one would remember its true nature?

The same thing happened to us, my toy soldier. It is part of the game. It is how you win.

I was proud of you. You found how to make two winners of the king's game.

I was more than a king. You were more than a soldier. And the game was far, far more than just a game.


End file.
